I believe your view of “sophisticated” may not stretch to where it will likely need to be in the future. For example, I can be an expert in biotech, but that does not make me a sophisticated investor. Understanding the industry is one thing and undertaking finance, investment and risk is another domain. As you mention, buying in early as you were curious about technology and “coincidentally” having the value of your assets substantially increase in value does not necessarily provide expertise in finance and risk. Unfortnately, a lot of these early investors having a large amount of capital is equivalent to a lottery, and chances are they will be drained by the sharks executing these ICOs. However, I agree that this is not the case for all early adopters. Some are professional traders and or have developed expertise in finance/risk.
In terms of your view on crowd sourced wisdom, I think you should see my other post on Insanity of Crowds :-)
